Thijs Leydens

"If you’re working in a big group, you’re fighting human nature."

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:31:14 -0500

“If you’re working in a big group, you’re fighting human nature.”

- Matt, on the 37signals blog

What is the ideal team size for web application development?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:17:00 -0500

I have this 100K+ project that I am supposed to run. I am a little overwhelmed by the amount of projects, sub-projects, tasks and teams, and the tools that are available to finish all of those.

I am a firm believer in small teams. I remember being in a band with 5 people. We had a great time, but there were always two camps: the slick guitar players vs. the relaxed rhythm section. The guys from the same school vs. the guys meeting new people all the time. The guys who can actually play vs. the guys who can’t.

After that band split up, I joined a rock band - as the third member. Everything went considerably smoother. If somebody wanted to add a poppy vocal line, the others could just say ‘meh’ and the part would be skipped. All clear. Not that we were hugely successful, but i had a great time.

At Slik headquarters, we work with 2 people on any typical project: one doing design and frontend, and another doing the programming. This works for projects up to 10K, but above that, tasks will need to be divided and complexity kicks in.

I think that for the mentioned project, I am going to split up the project into around 12 subprojects with all about 4-6 manweeks, divided into 3 people. One senior who takes the tough calls. One who has some designer feeling. One who does the dirty programming work. Let’s see how that works out.

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:57:00 -0500

It is hard to design something if you are too close to...

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:58:00 -0500

It is hard to design something if you are too close to it.

Running out of business cards, I had to design new ones. The old ones, with nicely stylized photos of the owner on the back, were great. But it takes too much hassle to get the right pictures, so I am moving on to a better - or at least faster - plan.

The orange dot is working, like it is working out great on our website. The font is too small, but that’s because this big iMac screen makes everything out of proportion. Should be easy to fix that - but I don’t know, something is missing.

Let me see if I can come up with something tomorrow.